Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, to testify publicly before Congress

(CNN)President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen will testify before the House Oversight Committee, the first major move by House Democrats to haul in a member of Trump's team connected to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, according to a schedule published by the committee.

Cohen has agreed to testify publicly before the panel on February 7, according to a statement from Cohen.

"I thank Michael Cohen for agreeing to testify before the Oversight Committee voluntarily," said Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, in a statement. "I want to make clear that we have no interest in inappropriately interfering with any ongoing criminal investigations, and to that end, we are in the process of consulting with Special Counsel Mueller's office."

Cohen is coming to Capitol Hill after he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in December to three years in prison on multiple charges, including two campaign finance crimes tied to illicit payments made to silence women during the presidential campaign — crimes that prosecutors say Trump directed Cohen to commit.

WASHINGTON — Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who implicated him in a scheme to pay hush money to two women claiming to have had affairs with him, has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month and give “a full and credible account” of his work for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen’s decision to appear before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Feb. 7 sets the stage for a blockbuster public hearing that threatens to further damage the president’s image and could clarify the depth of his legal woes. Mr. Cohen, a consigliere to Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer and presidential candidate as well as informally as president, was privy to the machinations of Mr. Trump’s inner circle and key moments under scrutiny by both the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and federal prosecutors in New York.

He could soon share them on national television under oath. ...

Asked on Thursday about Mr. Cohen’s plan to testify, Mr. Trump told reporters, “I’m not worried about it at all.”

It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors in New York or for Mr. Mueller would ask Mr. Cohen to keep from discussing topics still under investigation. Nor was it clear when Mr. Cummings formally issued an invitation to testify.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, on Thursday criticized news that President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen is set to publicly testify before the panel next month. ...

"Chairman Cummings promised to pursue rigorous, responsible, fact-based oversight," Jordan said in a statement. "However, the Chairman's announcement today suggests he will be using the committee as a venue for political theater rather than legitimate oversight."

Jordan knocked Cohen, saying he has pleaded guilty for misstatements he made to Congress while testifying about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

"The Democrats' star witness has admitted to providing intentionally false and misleading testimony to Congress," Jordan said. "He is also a witness in ongoing law-enforcement matters, including Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller's probe."

"When in the minority, Chairman Cummings and the Democrats have often cautioned against such actions," he added. "Now that Chairman Cummings is in charge, the same standards don't seem to apply. This makes clear that Chairman Cummings and the Democrats will do whatever it takes to attack this President."

A key Senate panel is moving closer to issuing a subpoena for Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and fixer, as part of its ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Asked Wednesday whether it is fair to say the Senate Intelligence Committee is moving closer to issuing a subpoena to Cohen after trying for some time to get him to agree to testify, the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told ABC News, “Fair.”

Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison for financial crimes, two violations of campaign finance law, and lying to Congress – a charge based on false testimony he provided to the Senate and House intelligence committees in the fall of 2017.

He met twice with the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in September and October of 2017, but the first interview was hastily cut short by “disappointed” committee leadership after Cohen released his own statement to the press beforehand.

Michael Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7, and, oh boy, is that going to be something. In fact, if he really gives a comprehensive account of everything he saw and did while toiling as Donald Trump’s factotum, he could be to the Trump administration what John Dean was to the Nixon administration. Cohen could peel away the layers of deception and denial to expose the rancid corruption boiling underneath.

Today we learn one small yet dramatic story that shows the way he and Trump did business. The Wall Street Journal reports:

In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign.

In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.

Mr. Cohen disputed that he handed over a bag of cash. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” he said, offering no further comment on his ties to the consultant.

Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where Jerry Falwell Jr., an evangelical leader and fervent Trump supporter, is president.

Lawmakers Vow To Investigate Evidence That Trump Told His Lawyer To Lie To Congress

The House Intelligence Committee will investigate the revelation that President Donald Trump ordered his longtime personal attorney to lie to Congress about a potentially lucrative real estate project in Moscow.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that in 2017, Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital ended and to obscure then-candidate Trump’s involvement in the discussions surrounding the project.

“The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date,” committee chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement. “We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.”

Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to House and Senate Intelligence committees about the Trump Moscow deal, and Schiff has already said the committee would like to re-interview him when Democrats reopen the committee’s shuttered Russia probe. Cohen misled lawmakers to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1,” an individual believed to be Trump, "in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations,” according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Other Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee agreed that the new revelation about Trump’s involvement in the Moscow project and Cohen’s testimony should be investigated as part of the panel’s reinvigorated Russia inquiry. Democrats, who won control of the House and its committees in November, plan to restart the probe in the weeks ahead after Republicans shuttered it last year.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen is reconsidering his plan to testify publicly to the US Congress next month because of intimidation by the president, an adviser to Cohen said on Thursday.

Lanny Davis, an attorney who has been advising Cohen on his media strategy, said in an interview with MSNBC that some remarks made by the Republican president about Cohen amounted to witness tampering and deserved to be criminally investigated.

"There is genuine fear and it has caused Michael Cohen to consider whether he should go forward or not, and he has not made a final decision," Davis said.

Last week Cohen agreed to appear before a congressional panel on Feb. 7, as US House of Representatives Democrats began kicking off numerous investigations of Trump, his business interests and his administration.

A legal representative for Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen expressed concern to congressional investigators this week about his clients’ safety and urged Republicans to rein in the president’s attacks on his former fixer.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s legal adviser and spokesman, traveled to Capitol Hill in recent days to discuss security and other logistical issues in meetings with House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Democratic committee aides. He said he pressed Republicans on Trump’s repeated tweets about Cohen’s family — particularly his client’s father-in-law — urging them to get their party leader to tone down his rhetoric about Cohen.

“I’m very concerned about the president of the United States acting like a mobster,” Davis said in a short phone interview Friday, just before an MSNBC appearance. “It’d not be any difference if the ‘don’ called somebody telling the truth a ‘rat’ and attacked the family and sent the implicit message to beware.”

Minutes later, Davis went on MSNBC to reiterate that message: “Family is out of bounds. There is only one person in this country — one president in our history — that would threaten family as a tactic to make fear of somebody he calls a ‘rat’ by telling the truth. And that’s President Trump, and the Republicans should be holding him accountable.”

Oversight Democratic and Republicans aides declined to comment for this story. But Democratic sources and one lawmaker on the panel told POLITICO that Democratic investigators were thinking about ways to push back on Trump and ensure Cohen’s safety.

Davis’ meeting with Hill staff come amid reports that his client is getting cold feet about testifying before Congress on Feb. 7.

Yeah, and the thing is, Cohen's father-in-law is a Ukrainian who was allegedly one of Trump’s "business partners," back in the day. That's supposedly how Cohen got the gig as Trump's thuglawyer. 'Course, Twitler is loyal to noone.

Yeah, and the thing is, Cohen's father-in-law is a Ukrainian who was allegedly one of Trump’s "business partners," back in the day. That's supposedly how Cohen got the gig as Trump's thuglawyer. 'Course, Twitler is loyal to noone.

Fima Shusterman, Cohen's father-in-law, was convicted of money laundering in 1993. Shusterman is a major scuzball.

I spoke to two former federal investigators who told me Cohen was introduced to Donald Trump by his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine who arrived in the U.S. in 1975. Shusterman was in the garment business and owned a fleet of taxicabs with his partners, Shalva Botier and Edward Zubok – all three men were convicted of a money-laundering related offense in 1993. “Fima may have been a (possibly silent) business partner with Trump, perhaps even used as a conduit for Russian investors in Trump properties and other ventures,” a former federal investigator told me. “Cohen, who married into the family, was given the job with the Trump Org as a favor to Shusterman.”

Also in the Rolling Stone article (which I always go back to when I need to find out some detail or other about Cohen) is a nugget which sends me into a paroxysm of hysteria whenever I read it.

Cohen’s in-laws Fima and Ania Shusterman bought three units in Trump World Tower worth a combined $7.66 million (one of which was rented to Jocelyn Wildenstein, the socialite known as “Catwoman” for undergoing extreme facial plastic surgery to please her cat-loving husband).

Yeah, and the thing is, Cohen's father-in-law is a Ukrainian who was allegedly one of Trump’s "business partners," back in the day. That's supposedly how Cohen got the gig as Trump's thuglawyer. 'Course, Twitler is loyal to noone.

Fima Shusterman, Cohen's father-in-law, was convicted of money laundering in 1993. Shusterman is a major scuzball.

I spoke to two former federal investigators who told me Cohen was introduced to Donald Trump by his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine who arrived in the U.S. in 1975. Shusterman was in the garment business and owned a fleet of taxicabs with his partners, Shalva Botier and Edward Zubok – all three men were convicted of a money-laundering related offense in 1993. “Fima may have been a (possibly silent) business partner with Trump, perhaps even used as a conduit for Russian investors in Trump properties and other ventures,” a former federal investigator told me. “Cohen, who married into the family, was given the job with the Trump Org as a favor to Shusterman.”

Also in the Rolling Stone article (which I always go back to when I need to find out some detail or other about Cohen) is a nugget which sends me into a paroxysm of hysteria whenever I read it.

Cohen’s in-laws Fima and Ania Shusterman bought three units in Trump World Tower worth a combined $7.66 million (one of which was rented to Jocelyn Wildenstein, the socialite known as “Catwoman” for undergoing extreme facial plastic surgery to please her cat-loving husband).

Well, since you mentioned Michele Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Cohen is innocent.

Schiff gives Cohen a date to testify before House Intelligence Committee ...

"What we do know from the special counsel is that Michael Cohen has shared information about core matters of the Russian investigation that he learned from people associated with the Trump Organization, the business organization. We also know from the special counsel that he has shared information about his communications with people associated with the White House during 2017 and 2018," he said. ...

On Sunday, Schiff said that the statement from the special counsel's office about the BuzzFeed story may have to do with "wanting to be able to use Michael Cohen as a witness in further prosecutions, and wanting to make sure that the public didn't have a perception that he was saying more than he was saying at least to the special counsel."

"There is a lot more to learn," Schiff said. "Congress has a fundamental interest in two things: First, in getting to the bottom of why a witness came before us and lied, and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie."

Schiff said his committee would do everything it could to make any eventual report by the special counsel public. William Barr, Mr. Trump's nominee to be the next attorney general, declined to commit to releasing the report in its entirety during confirmation hearings last week.

"Because they will fight us on this, we need to do our own investigations, because at the end of the day if the Justice Department tries to stonewall the release of that report for whatever reason, the American people are going to need to know what happened, and we're going to have to press forth," Schiff said.

Also in the Rolling Stone article (which I always go back to when I need to find out some detail or other about Cohen) is a nugget which sends me into a paroxysm of hysteria whenever I read it.

Cohen’s in-laws Fima and Ania Shusterman bought three units in Trump World Tower worth a combined $7.66 million (one of which was rented to Jocelyn Wildenstein, the socialite known as “Catwoman” for undergoing extreme facial plastic surgery to please her cat-loving husband).

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) on Wednesday suggested President Trump may have engaged in witness tampering after former lawyer Michael Cohen postponed his congressional testimony due to “ongoing threats against his family.”

“Cohen is delaying his testimony due to threats from Trump and Giuliani,” Lieu said on Twitter, referring to one of the president's attorneys, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R).

He then cited a federal statute regarding witness tampering.

“Here is 18 U.S.C. § 1512: ‘Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens ... or attempts to do so ... with intent to ... influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person’ is guilty of a felony.” <SNIP>

Ted Lieu
✔
@tedlieu
Cohen is delaying his testimony due to threats from Trump and Giuliani.

Here is 18 U.S.C. § 1512:

"Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens ... or attempts to do so ... with intent to ... influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person" is guilty of a felony.

Kyle Griffin
✔
@kylegriffin1
Lanny Davis: "Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen's continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date."

Blumenthal: ‘Clearly’ Trump is violating law against intimidating witnesses

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on Wednesday that President Trump is "clearly" violating law against intimidating witnesses with his comments about his former lawyer Michael Cohen.

“Clearly there’s a violation here of Title 18 United States Code 1512 which stops and protects against intimidation of witnesses," Blumenthal said on CNN's "The Situation Room." "He would be prosecutable, but for his being president.”

“I believe a sitting president can be indicted… to stop ongoing criminal activity," he added.
<SNIP>

“I think that that kind of statement by (Giuliani)…could be indictable,” Democrat @SenBlumenthal says about Michael Cohen postponing his congressional testimony citing alleged threats to his family made by President Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. http://cnn.it/2FSPojc

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen will comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify before that panel, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said Thursday.

“Of course he will honor the subpoena,” Davis said on MSNBC when asked if Cohen would testify. “But what he will do as a result of the subpoena is a legal issue that would come down to reasonable discussions.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee declined comment about a the subpoena, though several media outlets reported Thursday that the panel is seeking the former Trump fixer’s closed-door testimony in mid-February before he begins serving a three-year federal prison sentence.

Cohen, whose relationship with President Donald Trump dates back a dozen years, was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 until he delayed his appearance indefinitely Wednesday because of “ongoing threats against his family.” Davis, in a statement on Wednesday, accused Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, of making public comments in interviews and on social media that fueled the threats against Cohen.

On Thursday, Davis said there should be a criminal investigation into Giuliani for witness tampering and intimidation, calling Trump's lawyer “mentally unstable” for his alleged attacks on Cohen’s wife and father-in-law. He also urged Congress to protect Cohen with a resolution of censure as special counsel Robert Mueller conducts his investigation into whether the president's campaign colluded with Russia.